Shiloh was in trouble. Big trouble.

She’d been sent to her room. She sat on her bed, waiting, listening, her small rabbit heart pounding steadily in her chest.

The bedroom door was closed, but she could still hear her father, Dr. Darvin, arguing with Gavin’s father, Rutiger. They weren’t yelling at each other—they spoke softly, in fact, with respect—but there was still a certain tension in the air. A terseness in the way they addressed each other. Shiloh wasn’t used to them talking like that, and she felt guilty, knowing she was the cause.

It was as simple as this: Rutiger had caught her trying to sneak outside through the West hatch door. She’d almost managed it, too. She’d been pressed up behind the group of Watch members, small and silent as a mouse, following them.

They almost hadn’t noticed her. The inner hatch door was about to be opened. She’d been this close to finally seeing the outside for herself, to seeing the sky with her own two eyes. She’d missed the chance to go on an adventure, to see someplace new, a place beyond the bounds of these gray walls.

She knew why it was wrong, why she wasn’t supposed to go. The outside was poisonous. It would kill her. It would kill anyone. That’s what they said, anyway. But for some reason, she always had trouble believing it. She still didn’t believe it. It just seemed wrong, didn’t it? It was against the natural order of things. Why would God have created such a big world for mankind to live in, only to let it become poisoned and ruined forever? She simply couldn’t reconcile that a good God would allow such a thing.

Perhaps she was being silly. Perhaps she was being childish. She was ignoring and disobeying her elders, after all. But hadn’t Jesus said you had to be like a child to get into Heaven? Maybe this was like that. Maybe it would take someone like Shiloh, someone with enough child-like faith, with enough hope and determination, to break the curse. To show people it was okay.

Once the idea had taken root in her mind, she hadn’t been able to shake it off. By all accounts, if she’d headed out that door into the open air, she would have die. But she simply hadn’t wanted to believe God would let that happen.

Of course, there’d been no way for her to exit the Cloister on her own. The bay doors leading outside had to be operated from within, and she knew she wasn’t about to convince anyone to open them for her. Even if she had, her helper would have inevitably gotten in trouble at some point, especially if they were caught during the act.

The answer was simple: wait until the Watch was about to leave and follow them out the door.

It had very nearly worked.

Of course, at this point, she felt kind of stupid for trying it in the first place. All it had taken was for one Watch member to turn and look back at just the wrong time. In this case, that Watch member had been Rutiger, and he had been far from happy.

As Shiloh sat on her bed, waiting for the argument in the living room to end and her punishment to be decided, she looked down at her arm. There was a dark band of bruising on her forearm from where Rutiger had grabbed her before dragging her off to food processing, where her father had just been finishing up a shift. Darvin didn’t normally work in food processing, at least not until recently, but it seemed like his duties around the Cloister were growing all the time. He was everything to everybody, always willing to lend a helping hand; a model, upstanding citizen of the Cloister. Someone people looked up to and respected.

And now Shiloh had gone and embarrassed him. She’d been a nuisance, inconveniencing both the Watch and her father, who now had to take time to deal with all of this. Because of her.

The genuine version of this novel can be found on another site. Support the author by reading it there.

This had not gone as she’d planned at all.

Luckily, it seemed like it was almost over. The conversation in the main room was leveling off, becoming personable and small talky—she could tell just from their tones of voice. It felt good to know that this was almost over. The buildup, the anticipation of it; it was almost too much to bear.

As the moments passed, there was another quick, clipped exchange that Shiloh still couldn’t quite hear. Then footsteps moving toward the front door of their living quarters. The door opened, then shut. Then there was an eerie, tense silence, during which Shiloh could swear she was holding her breath the entire time. Then footsteps again, moving closer, coming to a stop just outside her door.

Shiloh gasped as her body forced her to finally breathe. Her quick heartbeat thudded dully in her head.

Her father knocked on the door. Three times.

Shiloh squeezed her eyelids shut, so tight it felt like her eyes would burst. But there was no getting around this, no escaping this moment. She just had to face it head-on.

She opened her eyes, took a deep breath, and squared her shoulders.

“Come in,” she said.

The door opened, and her father, Dr. Darvin, walked in. It was a cramped bedroom, almost the size of a closet, and her father only had to take a couple of steps before he was standing in front of the bed, facing her, looking down at her. His arms were folded. His short hair was a bit greasy and slightly disheveled, perhaps because of the manual labor he was doing in food processing. Though he paid close attention to hygiene and encouraged her to do so as well, somehow he seemed like he could go days without a proper shower if he was busy enough. Instead, he would dab a piece of cloth with some soap and water and quickly wipe down his armpits and back without even taking off his shirt. Gross.

He was clean-shaven most of the time, perhaps because it took him longer than normal to grow a beard out. Despite being relatively healthy-looking, there was something harrowed about his features. He had the look of someone who had a long way to go and too many things to carry. There were flecks of gray and white in his hair, and Shiloh wasn’t entirely sure if he was quite old enough to have earned them by age alone.

“Well,” he said. “You’ve been up to a lot, haven’t you?”

Shiloh swallowed. “I’m sorry, Dad.”

“No, it’s okay,” Darvin said. “That is, you don’t have to explain yourself if you don’t want to. I think I get it. Not everyone’s going to—Rutiger included. But I know how you feel. Sometimes, I get downright claustrophobic in this place. I remember what it was like before all this. And I wish I could change it. I wish it didn’t have to be like this.”

His eyes went a little distant as he said that last part, but then they seemed to come back into focus again.

“Dad, I wasn’t thinking.”

“I rather suspect that you were,” Darvin said, smiling sadly. “I don’t think it was spur of the moment. You thought about this, didn’t you? You planned it. I don’t blame you, sweetie. I blame myself. I’ve given you…the wrong impression. You’ve heard me time and time again talk about how much I miss the outside world, the beauty of it. Maybe I need to impress upon you how dangerous it is too. Maybe I need to be more clear.”

“It just... it didn’t seem right, what people say,” Shiloh said.

“It isn’t right,” Darvin said. He put his hands on her upper arms. “But it’s still true. Do you see?”

He seemed like he was going to say more, but then his eyes flicked downward toward the bruise on her forearm.

“Was this...?”

Shiloh nodded.

The doctor stared at her, his expression turning rigid. “Perhaps the tone of our conversation earlier wasn’t quite correct. I’ll have to rectify that. I’m sorry, Shiloh. I should have stood up for you better. I didn’t understand. But at the same time, I need you to understand something. He was right to be angry with you. No, don’t look at the floor. Look at me. Stay away from the outside, Shiloh. Don’t even think about going out there. Ever.”

“But, dad,” she said. “I want to join the Watch—”

“No!” Her father exclaimed, his fingers digging into her arms, pinching her. His eyes were wide. If she didn’t know better, he seemed…afraid. “You can’t. I won’t allow it. It’s far too dangerous. Do you understand me, Shiloh?”

“But I—” she tried to defend herself. She couldn’t help it. It was a dear dream of hers. She didn’t want to let it go. “It’s perfectly survivable with the right—”

“Didn’t you hear what I said?” he interrupted, his grip tightening. He was shaking her now. His face was turning red. “None of this talk about the outside. Not for you. Not ever! Do you hear me, Shi—”